Crossing the border with Blue Jays beat reporter Jordan Bastian.

Game 5: Toronto at Cleveland pregame

A slightly new look for the Blue Jays’ lineup this afternoon here at The Jak…er, Progressive Field. With lefty Scott Lewis on the mound, Toronto skip Cito Gaston decided to give a day off to left-handed hitters Travis Snider and Lyle Overbay.

In the lineup instead are Jose Bautista (left) and Kevin Millar (first). Gaston said it wasn’t strictly due to the left-hander on the mound, though the manager did say he feels Adam Lind handles southpaws a tad better than Snider right now.

“This is a team where I’m very seldom going to pinch-hit for anybody,” Gaston explained. “So the other guys will just be sitting here if you don’t play them once in a while.”

Michael Barrett is also behind the plate for a second game in a row. Gaston said that’s partly due to the fact that he wants Rod Barajas to catch Doc on Saturday and Rod will also be behind the plate on Sunday. It also is because, as Gaston said all spring, Barajas will likely play 4-5 times per week, with the backup taking the other starts.

I’m also going to go ahead and say that if B.J. Ryan or Scott Downs have any issues this series, the team might want to consider their pregame clubhouse routine.

Ryan was playing a Golden Tee arcade game and Downs was handling a plastic shotgun, taking out some deer on another hunting arcade game. I’m surprised more pitchers don’t injure their arms here in Cleveland. Might be a strategy by the Tribe.

JB
I’m glad you posted here. Now maybe you understand the problem we all have in posting. It took me over 5 minutes to sign on. I see it took you 8 minutes to post.

So when you’re in the mood for deleting why don’t you delete the 2006 and 2007 archives, so this site speeds up.
Because right now, this site is pathetic. I am posting this at 5.12, lets see how long it takes to post-maybe Ill get lucky.

JB
it isn’t consistent. That first post took 3 minutes I posted another that spun for 5 minutes and got a server timeout error. I’m going to time all my posts from here on in so you can easily see.

There’s too much stuff being reloaded each time like the 2006 and 2007 archives that serve no purpose and should be delelted. If you watch the bottom left hand side of your screen when you reload there’s sometimes 300 or 400 items being reloaded that seriously impact the reload time and I have high speed cable.

In addition, MLB are running all that video stuff, including gameday and MLB tv, and either their servers or hub pipe can’t can’t handle the load, they need to be seriously uploaded.

I realize this is not your job-other than eliminating those old archives, but someone has to tell MLB to clean up their act and you’re elected. lol. It’s now 5.42.

I appreciate the problem, but I’m not going to delete the archives — not even sure where I’d go in this thing to do that anyway. I actually go back and use old posts for reference throughout the year. I’ll pass a note along to our blog people and let them know you’ve been having problems. Again, I’ve never had any issues on my end.
~JB

Just in case they ask, I’m running a quad processor, 8 gb.’s of ram on high speed under Vista with Explorer 8 and I’m one of many having problems, a number just don’t post any more.
By the way those archives can be stored in “my documents” or put them up on facebook for future use and reference so they don’t need to be stored and reloaded here. It’s now 5.59

Bastian, why are you such an awful journalist? I’m sorry, but the game has been delayed for several hours and the blogosphere and BJ’s message board is just fiending for information on what’s going on (so that we can plan the rest of our days, in many cases) and you can’t even post a two sentence update indicating whether or not you know anything and, if so, what? Seriously. I like your reporting, but this is indefensible.

RAOULDUKE1: As I’ve pointed out on here numerous times, my in-game updates can be found on twitter under @MLBastian. I won’t be updating the blog much in-game during the season unless it’s for breaking news. Follow me on twitter and you’ll get even more Jays info.
~JB

Do you have to put up with a lot of people complaining rather than talking about the game? I cam eback to read some new comments and all I have read are complaints so far, and absolutely no one talking about how the Jays have been able to come back in this game, although right as i wrote this the tribe hit a home run to bring the lead down to one :(

Well, that’s 6 starts in total now for Scott Richmond and tonight’s start convinced me, he’s not a starter for the major leagues, unless he solves a critical problem.
The problem is he can’t get left hand hitters out. In 6 starts he’s given up 3 home runs-all to left hand hitters. Lefties are hitting .426 against him while righties are hitting .128. So he’d make a great right hand batter specialist, but no way he survives with lh hitters hammering him like they do.
The disturbing thing is Richmond and the coaching staff knew this issue at the end of last year, and tonight Cleveland lefties nailed him. What that means to me is he still hasn’t developed a pitch to get lefties out or at least keep them honest, when he knew he had to do it in order to survive at this level.
Unless that changes quick, other teams will load up their lefties against him and pound him into the ground.
I hope either Cecil or Janssen is ready to replace him soon, we will need them.

gsjays:
That took me about 5 seconds to sign in this AM. The problem is not with the archives–they are just links that don’t take any time to load unless you click them. You notice when you go to your sign in page, that the address bar sez “https:”. You are signing in over an encrypted connection to protect your personal info, but when the mlb server is busy, it can get jammed up. I had probs yesterday, and even got an error page twice, but unless mlb is willing to fork out some cash for fatter pipes, that’s what you are going to get.
Wild game yesterday, and too bad about Richmond. The last 2 innings, he was dropping his overhand curve in for strikes, and was doing much better. Had he not been forced out, I think he could have kept it close. It was tough for both bullpens, with the weather, and the delay. Ours was bad, but theirs was worse!
The key today is a strong outing from Doc, and get to Cliff Lee early and get into their pen.

As far as Richmond goes, it is far too early to start calling for his head. There are far more right handed hitters than lefties, and when you look at the bottom line, he has the ability to keep the team in the game, and that’s what you expect from a #5 guy. After all, home runs or not, he left with the lead last night. And aside from Frazor’s outing the other day, I haven’t seen a better overhand curve yet this Spring.
Let’s wait and see where we are in May, after all our pitchers settle in and get better command of their breaking stuff. I agree with you in that I would like to see Jansen in the lineup, but in the meantime, lighten up! We are atop the AL East, and Boston is at the bottom, so enjoy it while you can.

I agree with Gnorm about Richmond but they do have better options in the minors. I’d take Janssen or Cecil in that spot before I go to Richmond. That said he has done as you’ve mentioned which is keep the team in the game for the most part.

What’s with all the Jordan bashing lately ?
The Jays are off to a really nice start and people are talking about how Jordan doesn’t update his blog when he has mentioned that in-game updates will be less frequent this year.
With the exception of Thursday i’ve had no problems signing on to the blog. It’s been quick as usual, though that complaint I can understand.

gnorman
Just for the record, I post this stuff regarding the blog for feedback so the site improves, not just to complain. I was in the web development business for 5 years and my experience in this stuff suggests if it isn’t fixed soon, the whole thing will crash.

There are multiple reasons to the two basic problems we face as posters which are “how long it takes to log in” and ” how long it takes to post”.
I won’t get too technical but http is a standard internet protocol, it has nothing to do with encryption. The actual log in still goes through the same path which is a major part of the problem on log ins.
Next time when you log in you’ll note right after http you see “comment/mlbbastian…”, which means to log in you must plough through all the same stuff you do when you post, only you go to an encrypted part of the site.
In my opnion, without having access to the actual site code, all the achives have a great deal to do with both problems.
All MLB sites are likely hosted by an outside isp-I doubt very much if MLB has their own hub. MLB probably portion a bit of space to each team, so the more stuff per site, the slower it’s going to be. Point is, it’s all stored in the same space. Imagine how many posts in total have been done on all mlb sites since 2006-thats ultimately what you plow through each time you post and the more active the mlb writer is on a particular site, the longer it takes.

All of this, wouldn’t have been as much of a problem until game day, MLB TV and more video presentations were added on each site. On this particular site-as an example, a video is running with real bad script code-which alone can bring down the site and at worst, dramatically slows all activity on the site.

A perfect example is when I tried to sign in today on this site, I got 3 server timeouts and couldn’t get on. I went to the KC site which has very few archives, signed in in seconds, went from there to the MLB site and from there to here-all in less than a minute.

The solution, short term is for MLB to do some things. Either contract for a signifcant bigger pipe-assuming the ISP has it available (which they might not) or take all the achives from each site and put them onto a different server and move game day and MLB TV to a different ISP and clean up the code in some of the video presentations on each site that are causing some of the blockage.

Long term, MLB should set up their own hub to eliminate any pipe issues, set up their own noc, and rewrite all these sites with tighter code.
The point is, MLB are moving to garner more and more revenue from a web based presence which is a good idea, but they forgot to put the architecture in place before doing it. Now they’d better bandaid what they have or it will all come crashing down.

gnorman
My point on Richmond is very simple. He needs to develop a pitch to get lefties out. That isn’t asking for his head as you put it, that’s simply pointing out what is a significant weakness he has which needs to change for him to be an effective mlb pitcher.
The idea is to improve, not put your head in the sand and hope a problem goes away.You and I both know, other teams already know this weakness and will start loading up their lineups with lefties when facing him. Look what Hafner did to him yesterday.
That curve he has is very good, but obviously not effective against left hand hitters. If he develops another pitch which is effective then he will be a nice starter. My concern on that issue, though is, Richmond’s had this problem from day 1, I’m disappointed that a combination of the off season and spring training didn’t solve the problem. I hope Arnsburg takes him on as a project and helps him develop that pitch.

Enigma, I hope you don’t thin my pointing out difficulteis with this site is Jordan bashing because it isn’t. I have the upmost respect for Jordan and think he’s one of the best MLB writters. I also have no clue as to why aoulduke1 made the post he did, because this site has never been a “game action type of site.”
This post is at 12.01

Richmond will only be there for 5-6 starts, until Janssen is ready. If the Jays can win 50% of those starts, it’d be a big bonus. They’re already one up on that. I just hope that, for his sake, he pitches well enough in those 5-6 starts and then down in AAA to get a shot somewhere else, because I think the Jays pitching is too deep and good for Richmond to really have a long term shot a cracking the rotation as the 5th starter.

I was very impressed with Millar (did I spell his name right?). Given that he hit twenty home runs last year, and seems to have his swing in gear this year, it would be a shame if Cito trots out Overbay, game-after-game, at Millar’s and the team’s expense. Toronto is off to a great start. We need to capitalize on this and try to win as many as possible as early as possible. As much as I like Cito, I am afraid that his commitment to players like Overbay may hurt us. It would be great to get Overbay going, but that is not Cito’s or the team’s job — it is Overbay’s job to get himself going. If he cannot do it, move Millar in there asap (this is Cito’s job), and let’s get some production out of 1B to keep this winning streak going.

I think it’s been along time since this team’s offense exploded like they did yesterday. How about Lind, now .476ba/ .476obp/ 1.0 slg, and in 21 at bats has 3 home runs-tying him for 2nd place in all baseball, 11 rbi’s-first in all baseball and 4th in BA in the AL.

Millar did a great game. I also agree we need to win as many as possible this month, since we spend most of it playing aganst the AL Central.
I am still hopeful Overbay gets it going, thank goodness Lind is hitting i nthe 5th hole.

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